Master of Magic

I have such a love hate relationship with this game. The combinations and synergies of spells, abilities, and troops is great. The art is beautiful. The RNG is just on the edge of annoying and fun. But I just can't get past the blatant cheating of the AI. I know this is just how strategy games try to make a game challenging. But it just gets annoying to have a single city AI gather a massive army without slowing it's own development at all. Furthermore, while your troops struggle to take out a single sprite held node, the AI does it with a few spearmen really reliably. IMO it's bad enough that it just makes victory tedious rather than satisfying.

I had the original Master of Magic back in 1994 and liked it very much. That is exactly why I wanted to like this remake. Unfortunately, this feels like a game that rides on the reputation of the original without really understanding what made it good. The graphics are more modern, sure, but there are effects everywhere and they often get in the way instead of helping. The old game was much clearer to play. What I do not understand is why some mechanics feel worse than in a game released over 30 years ago. MoM94 already had enough content and a solid gameplay loop. Instead of taking that foundation and updating it to modern standards, the developers changed things that did not need changing. The whole game gives me a feeling that it was released before it was truly finished. There is potential here, but many parts feel half-done. The UI is probably my biggest complaint. I would say 90% of my frustration comes from the interface alone. Settings are also almost non-existent. There are very few options to customize the experience, and visual effects cannot be disabled in any meaningful way. It feels like the game was designed mainly for console users or people who do not s…

A great update to the classic. After having gone through the base game and the DLC, a few of the big mods are keeping things interesting. I'm sure I'll still be playing from time to time for years.

I like that someone made a remake of a beloved classic, but this one is not done right. There are bugs, stuff not working as intended, or not working at all. AI players cheat a bit. I personally mostly dislike the fact that the capital is now protected by player tower shooting magic at attackers. While it protects from early rushes, it also means that even in mid or late game units with low magic resistance (that's most racial units and catapults) are effectively useless in attacking enemy capitals. The tower can inflict heavy losses or wipe out such units. You really should assemble a very special team to strom enemy capitals. Calapults are useless in this scenario (counterintuitive) as the die super fast. Overall, the two mentioned problems severely limit playble strategies and choices. I will probably not play without at least 1 sorcery book (for magic resistance mostly), and will probably never again try to play as orks, poor boys just can't compete with other races, even with orcmancy (good bonuses, but it costs 2 picks!).

Tags: TBS - Turn Strategy - Fantasy TLDR: Probably not as good as Age of Wonders but still decent. Lacks a campaign. Skirmish mode is pretty fun. Nice rework of the old Master of Magic game. Has a good amount of customizability for difficulty and neutral unit presence and behavior. Fun but slow to progress. The cheating AI is not something I verified myself as I was playing on easy and it took me a while to progress. Still a concern. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1669000/Age_of_Wonders_4/

Love the new adaptation. Only one thing on the wish list...to be able to import portraits for the the wizards and/or heroes.